NG Ballast Train

Up to the early 2000's when the track was extended to the Sumpter Depot on the Sumpter Valley Ry. from time to time our little railroad ran ballast trains. These work trains were a lot of fun for the train crew because they were anything but routine like our passenger operations. I recall firing #19 on one of the last ballast trains that we operated to finish up ballast to the end of the line and it was a great experience because the weight of our train was very close to the rated tonnage of #19 on the grade near the depot. Here we see a much earlier shot with the WH Eccles #3 Heisler in charge. The ballast cars are former hoppers from the East Broad Top, the metal roofed box car is DRGW and I'd bet that the photo was taken from the roof of SVRy caboose #5. The down side of ballasting with these cars is that they fill the space between the rails up to the rail head. A very greasy ties is usually placed in front of the trailing truck of the car being dumped which acts as a plow to smooth out the ballast. I say down side, because it makes it difficult to inspect the inside of rail joints and the covered part of ties. One of our long time members Eric Wunz has led the effort hands on with shoveling out excess ballast onto MOW cars behind our A4 and distributing where needed. He and a few helpers completed this project in recent years and now he has moved on to replacement of ties that are now possible to properly inspect.




Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/05/2022 04:58PM by J.B.Bane.